Before you call
Freezer not holding temperature
A freezer gives you more warning than a refrigerator does — softening product, frost patterns, a compressor that never stops. Reading those signs early is the difference between a repair and a freezer full of spoiled food.
- 1
Put a thermometer between packages, not against the wall, and read it after four hours.
Against the wall you measure the evaporator, not the food. A freezer should hold 0°F. Knowing whether it is at 10°F or 25°F tells a technician a great deal before they arrive, and it tells you whether the food is still safe.
- 2
Look at how the frost is distributed.
Even light frost is normal. A thick slab on one wall, or frost only around the door, points at a seal leak or a defrost fault rather than a cooling failure. Frost that reforms within days of being cleared is a defrost problem — the ice is a symptom, not the cause.
- 3
Check the unit has clearance around it, especially in a garage.
Freezers reject heat from the back and sides and need a few inches to do it. A chest freezer boxed in by storage in a San Diego garage that hits 105°F in August is being asked to do something outside its rating, and it will run constantly trying.
- 4
Test the door or lid seal with a sheet of paper, all the way round.
Chest freezer lids in particular develop leaks at the hinge end that are invisible until you test them. A leaking seal produces exactly the frost-and-warm-product pattern that looks like a dying compressor.
Where to stop
When to call a technician
Not for our convenience. These are the points where carrying on is either unsafe or makes the repair bigger.
- The compressor runs without stopping and the box still will not reach temperature.
- Frost returns within days of a full manual defrost.
- There is water pooling under the unit — the defrost drain is likely blocked, and clearing it is a strip-down.
- The unit is a commercial or built-in freezer. Those are a different service entirely.
An on-site diagnosis is $65.00, credited toward the repair if you go ahead. If this page has already fixed it, better still — you owe us nothing.